Here in My Heart: A Novella (Echoes of the Heart) (8 page)

She hadn’t opened up when Brad knocked on the front door of the Dream Whip. Thank God for the key Vivian still kept on the hook beside the kitchen phone. He’d let himself in. Stepping back into the restaurant he’d grown up in had stopped him cold—red upholstered booths and chairs, white tabletops, everything edged in vintage chrome that might have looked beaten up to some. To him, all of it, especially the spacious counter in front where people were greeted and orders were placed and staged before they were carried out to waiting tables, would always feel like home.

He’d pushed through period swinging doors to the kitchen. The cramped space beyond was still overcrowded with industrial-grade appliances that hadn’t been state-of-the-art when he’d worked there as a kid. He’d found Dru elbows-deep, forming by hand the all-beef, secret-spiced patties that would become mouthwatering burgers when she opened the joint at eleven.

“I didn’t need your help when I was eighteen,” she finally said. She flattened another patty onto a paper-covered sheet pan. “I don’t need it now.”

“You didn’t have anywhere else to go. You wanted to stay in Chandlerville.”

“You don’t know that.” She kneaded a handful of the fresh ground beef that Watson’s Butcher Shop delivered seven mornings a week, every day except Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving.

“I know you.” That was why he’d repacked his things into his duffel bag that morning. He’d bunk with Travis the rest of his stay in town, so he didn’t run Dru out of Vivian’s. “This town and having a place in it you could call your own is all you’ve ever wanted. So I asked my grandmother to help, five years ago. It’s your doing that Vi wants you to stay now. I’m sure everyone else in Chandlerville does, too. Horace told me you’re a Girl Scout leader, a volunteer at the Y beyond radKIDS, a tutor at the middle and high schools. You help out the Dixons when they need you, on top of the work you do at the restaurant and how much more Vi’s depended on you at home the last few years. You’re dug in. You’ve made a good life for yourself and everyone around you. Don’t piss that chance away because you’re still mad at me.”

“Another chance that’s going to be because of you, whether I want it to be or not?”

“So what? The only person who cares about you and me anymore is
you
.” Brad saw her blink as if he’d slapped her. “That’s not what I meant. I care about your happiness. I want you to have whatever Vi wants you to have.” Surprisingly, he realized that he did, even if it meant he lost the house. “But for this to work, you’re going to have to get out of your own way about us.”

“
This
isn’t going to work.”

“Why not?” The pros and cons had rolled around in his mind until dawn. “Travis forgave me. So did your parents and Vi. No one else in Chandlerville knows me well enough anymore to care about what happened when we were in high school. Meanwhile the business is solvent. It’s thriving in hard economic times. And your fingerprints have been all over how Vi’s run things for years. You’ve been invaluable to her here and at home. What does it matter if keeping a piece of that for yourself has anything to do with me?”

“It matters to me. Making my way on my own, working my butt off to get what I have and to pay people back for everything they’ve already given me, matters to me.”

“And you don’t like the idea of one of those people being me,” he said.

She sighed. “No.”

She’d been fearlessly independent as a kid, though she’d adored her foster family. Brad wondered how much Dru still thought that she’d just gotten lucky, that the stars had magically aligned when Family Services chose the Dixons for her.

She’d said as much to him once, when they’d been close: that it never really felt real, the life she’d stumbled into in Chandlerville. Maybe Vivian had figured that out, too, and this was her way of pushing Dru into accepting that she could stop fighting so hard to earn things that were already rightfully hers. Only now Dru had their teenage baggage to deal with, while she tried to wrap her head around Vivian’s final plans.

“What about my kids?” Dru asked. “Did you let guilt make you think you should involve yourself in your grandmother’s funding of my radKIDS program?”

“I’m not running my life based on mistakes I made when I was barely old enough to shave, Dru.” It was one of the first positive steps he’d taken, turning loose of what he couldn’t go back and change. “And no one talks Vivian Douglas into anything. She was intrigued by your proposal when you pitched the idea for the Whip to sponsor something that would make the community better. My being drunk off my ass half the time when I was a teenager, and sleeping with Selena Rosenthal, and the mess that night made out of all of our lives, had nothing to do with Vivian asking what I knew about radKIDS. Or me telling her she should support the program. It was good for the business; it gave the restaurant a stronger profile in the community and let the public see some of the good Vivian’s been doing behind the scenes.
And
it was good for you.”

“
And
the life I thought I was building for myself”—Dru pounded a beef patty flat, creating a sad-looking pancake instead of the kind of juicy, rounded burger Brad could still form in his sleep—“was somehow still about you, even after you rejected me when we were kids. How am I supposed to feel about that?”

“Nothing. Don’t feel anything about me.” Something in his chest squeezed, making the words nearly impossible to get out. “Just know that I pushed you away when we were kids because Oliver asked me to, not because I didn’t want everything you were offering me that night. Accept that I was trying to do the right thing then, just like I was when I encouraged Vivian to help you. Then let it go, so we can deal with what she needs from us now.”

“You . . .” Dru’s bottom lip trembled. “You wanted me back then?”

“Yes.” She deserved to know that, even if it didn’t change a damn thing.

He was standing between her and the door to the front of the place. He was close enough to block her escape through the back if she decided to run from him again. She was still wearing the same clothes as last night, loose jeans and a pink Chandlerville Chargers sweatshirt and beaten-up sneakers with no socks. Her short, softly curling hair looked finger-combed. There wasn’t a whisper of makeup to soften the shadows beneath her eyes. She was disheveled and sleep-deprived. She looked better to him than his best dreams.

He didn’t say that he’d never stopped wanting her. She didn’t need that from him. He’d promised himself yesterday at the Y not to push her to be part of his life again, even temporarily. But now too much was at stake for her, for him not to try.

“You won Vi over, Dru. You’ve made a difference in Chandlerville and Vivian’s life. You’ve made a difference in my life, too.”

Her head snapped up. She stared at him as if she couldn’t take another bombshell. But it was time to put all of his cards on the table.

“You got me interested in radKIDS,” he explained, “the same time you did Vivian. I lobbied for the same kind of program in Savannah, and I got my captain interested. I’m the new crime prevention officer he’s created a position for. I get to work with families and kids and women and minorities and whoever else needs me, helping them better protect themselves and each other hundreds of miles away from here—because of you.”

“While I’ve been oblivious the entire time.” Dru gave up on the hamburgers and walked to the sink.

She turned her back while she washed up.

“It wasn’t important that you knew. And the home you’ve made for yourself here is all that matters to Vivian now. It should be all that matters to you. Not my mistakes when we were kids.”

She turned off the water with enough force to make the faucet squeak. She dried her hands on the oversize apron she’d tied around her trim waist, and then she unwound the strings and threw the thing onto the counter beside pots and pans that had been scoured at closing the night before.

“This is all just . . . too much.” Her attention was fixed on her raggedy sneakers. “Please tell me why you can’t seem to ever be straight with me, Brad. It’s been so long since I’ve felt like I understood anything about you. About us. And now we’re supposed to live together? Work together?”

“I’ve never lied to you. Not even about Selena. I told you the God’s honest truth when you asked me what happened, even though I knew it would hurt you, ruin things for us, and get back to your brother. I shouldn’t have gotten drunk with her when she broke up with Oliver and came looking for me to console her the night I’d pushed you away. I shouldn’t have slept with her. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life—the way Oliver lost it when he found out about everything, including you and me kissing. He was my best friend. I wish I could go back and undo my part in what happened. I wish I could have kept you from losing him in your life. But I didn’t lie to you. Just like I’m being straight with you now.”

She crossed her arms, hugging herself the way he wanted to.

“You’re talking yourself into making a huge mistake,” he said. “If you refuse to abide by the terms of Vi’s will, if you won’t agree to what she wants us to do while she’s still alive, it’s about you and your own baggage. I might have burned you once. But there’s nothing going on between us now except my grandmother’s antics, her concern for the future of her home and business, and whether or not you can learn to trust me again.”

Underneath all the admirable qualities everyone instantly fell for when they met Dru, something else had been lurking since she’d been a kid, something he’d never been able to put a finger on. That same wary something was looking back at him again from Dru’s summer blue eyes. She may have masqueraded once as a reckless tomboy. But deep inside had lurked the seeds of the almost-too-careful woman before him.

She looked as close to helpless now as he’d ever seen her.

And murderous.

“I appreciate everything you and your grandmother have done.” Her expression evened out until he might have been talking with a stranger.

“But you’re not going to listen to Horace about what Vivian wants? I’m going to see her next. I sat with Horace for a while after you left last night. She’s serious about this. We either work together”—he gazed around the kitchen—“or all of this goes away. Can you really let that happen, just to keep me out of your life?”

“Vivian’s will is fine. I don’t care. I mean, I do. I don’t like the position your grandmother’s putting me in with you, and I don’t like her thinking that if she promises to leave me something that should be yours, I’ll jump at the chance. But there’s no point in troubling her about any of it or putting each other through any more of this, until it’s time to settle things once she’s . . .”

“Dead?” He watched Dru shudder. He hadn’t come to terms with it, either. “She’s dying. And it’s troubling her, what she thinks she’s leaving unfinished, what will happen to you, to everything, to—”

“Us?”

“Horace said by the time you got to the house last night, she’d already heard about us meeting up at the Y.”

“And she thinks it’s her job to fix
us
? After all these years of her staying out of it? She hasn’t said one word to me about the night we . . .”

“Kissed?”

Dru’s cheeks flushed at the memory that could still harden his body in an instant.

Her arms reaching for him, circling his neck, her sweet breath washing over him as she whispered,
“Please, Brad, let me,”
and kissed him like he’d never been kissed before or since. Like she’d been made for him, her body fitting perfectly against his. Like she’d saved her taste and softness and hunger for him alone. Like he’d never let her go . . .

“Vivian knows what happened,” Brad said, shutting out the rest. “Vivian wanted to know everything about why Oliver and I fought that night. Once I told her how much I was still drinking, how selfishly I’d let you and my best friend down, she said she was through enabling me. It was time I figured out what I wanted from my life—somewhere else. She never mentioned you to me again, except when I asked her how you were doing, or she shared something about the business or radKIDS.”

“But now it’s suddenly imperative that we play nice, like nothing’s happened?”

“Maybe she’s already off her rocker. But if this will bring her a little comfort, isn’t that enough?”

“Enough . . .” She swallowed. “For what?”

“For us to stop being strangers.”

She laughed. “She wants us to live together. Work here together.”

“She wants us to make peace. All she’s asking for is a fresh start, out in the open, even though I’m sure we’ll hear about it from half the town. This isn’t what I expected, either. But Vivian wants us to be able to coexist in Chandlerville once she’s gone. Or she really does intend to sell it all, so we can walk away clean.”

Dru’s chin came up. “I thought that’s what you already did.”

Yeah. He’d thought so, too. But how successful could he have been, if he could want this second chance with Dru so badly?

“I became more than the mistakes I’ve made. I have a good life to go back to. That doesn’t mean I stopped caring about things here. Vivian knew what she was doing, cutting me off years ago. She did the right thing getting behind you staying in Chandlerville. Maybe she’s not so far off the mark now.”

God, Brad hoped so.

He hoped he wasn’t pushing himself and Dru into something that would create even more damage in her life. She looked around at the kitchen’s worn industrial surfaces and appliances, as if they were old friends she couldn’t imagine not seeing every day. It was the same searching way she’d once looked at him, the night she’d asked him for the truth about Selena.

He stepped closer, grateful when she let him. He wanted to help her, hold her, somehow make this easier for her. He settled for brushing her cheek with the backs of his fingers.

“I know you thought you had me out of your life,” he said. “I know it’s what you still think you need. But you trusted me to help with Lisa and the other kids last night, and we did a good thing together. We’ll figure something out with this mess Vi’s started, as long as you’re willing to try. This isn’t like you, Dru, running from a challenge. We
can
work together. I won’t let you down again.”